


build not from sorrow

by Hokuto



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Dreams and Nightmares, Eris Needs A Hug, Gen, Nonnies Made Me Do It, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 14:45:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23104462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/pseuds/Hokuto
Summary: She dreams she can save them.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 13





	build not from sorrow

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a "100 words of 'hurt me instead'" prompt, because I like feeling pain.

In gray dust, under Earth's cold light, she dreams she can save them.

Phantasmal green taints the silvered landscape, glows corpsefire bright in the shadows of humanity's first steps outward. Wei Ning sprawls stunned, half-crushed by the monster's sheer presence. Eriana is screaming, but she's too far, her sun-warm Radiance drowned by the Deep, and this time, Eris is closer. Close enough to matter.

She leaps forward and rolls to rise wreathed in lightning. Her Light is a beacon. Bait. Crota's raised sword holds above Wei Ning as she struggles to crawl back, and Eris says, "Take me instead, beast!"

The weight of Crota's gaze beats upon her. She throws her arms wide, letting the arc blades vanish, and shouts again, "Take me! Leave them to flee and take me instead. Do what you will with me, but let them go!"

Eriana screams for both of them now, crying for Wei to get up and Eris to run, but Brya has Eris's back, brave Ghost that she is, and keeps her Light strong. Crota still looms. His jagged mouth widens; the broad sword shifts, swings with the gravity of true death, and to her own horror she wavers—

She wakes choking with moon-ash and shame, hunching in her little shelter. Even in dreams she fails. She cannot protect them. What a mockery of fantasy it is, thinking that if she had offered herself, those she loved could be safe. They are dead, their phantoms screaming distantly a hands'-breadth from her bed, and the Hive hurt her anyway: devoured her poor little Ghost, ate away her Light and her eyes, starved her and twisted her and haunted her mind with whispers until her heart is too weak to imagine anything but shadows and cowardice. What point or use in dragging herself out to face another day of never-ending strife? What change will she make?

The answer is the same as every other day.

She may make no difference by her actions, but there will be no change if she does not act. She cannot reach back across time to sacrifice herself for Eriana and Wei; she can warn a reckless young Guardian of the dangers they face, or pull another out of the dark as she did for the slayer of Oryx. At the least—her fingers brush across Omar's knife-sheath, Sai's carved beads, the rough links of Vell's mark—she can remember the truth of her friends.

It's barely enough to get her up and out to face the Guardians, but it's more than nothing. And she'll take every scrap she can get.


End file.
